Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  She sighed. ‘I could take my share of driving if I hadn’t fallen.’

  ‘If you want to help, talk to me. Keep me awake. Tell me something interesting.’

  That took her aback. ‘Such as?’

  ‘All the down and dirty details of your life,’ he said, but in a warm, teasing voice. ‘What made you want to nurse in the Sahel, of all places?’

  What would he think if she answered honestly? It was as far removed from my life in Perth as possible, and too far out of Mukhtar’s limited range of imagination in his search for me. ‘The Florence Nightingale effect,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I saw documentaries on Africa, the ads for Médecins Sans Frontières and CARE Australia. I wanted to help.’

  ‘How long have you been in Africa?’

  She stared out of the window, seeing nothing but blackness, and felt a tug of longing for the pretty, twinkling lights of the city against the Swan River in her beloved Perth. ‘Five years.’

  ‘How long did you live in Shellah-Akbar?’

  ‘Six months.’ Six short months, yet she’d been there longer than anywhere else. She was always ready to disappear. Her superiors expected it, knew she was on the run from someone. Her stores of food and canteens, the burq’a she used but that she didn’t attend the mosque, told everyone what she was, but they didn’t ask questions. They reassigned her whenever she showed up at one of the refugee camps—always a different camp, and a village in another direction.

  She’d hoped to remain at Shellah-Akbar longer. For the first time in a long time, she’d felt among friends. Despite Sh’ellah’s interest in her, she’d felt part of the wider family with the villagers’ unquestioning acceptance and friendship. She’d felt—almost safe.

  ‘It’s a good place to hide,’ he commented in a thoughtful tone as he geared up to drive down a hill. She started, so closely did he mirror her thoughts.

  She didn’t answer him, couldn’t without lies.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘I’m glad you couldn’t lie to me.’

  ‘I owe you better than that.’ She blinked hard against the stinging in her eyes.

  He put the pedal to the floor to ride up yet another hill. ‘You owe me nothing, Hana…but you’re not going to tell me your story, are you?’

  It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer that, either.

  ‘We should only be half an hour from the truck.’

  She said awkwardly, ‘That’s good.’ The sooner she got away from him, the sooner she could start her life over without these silly dreams.

  ‘Have you been back to Abbas al-Din since you left as a child?’ was his next question.

  ‘Only twice.’ Once for three months, during her sister Fatima’s meeting with her future husband and during the time of their courtship and marriage; once to meet Latif. She’d still be there now, happily living with Latif in a house beside Fatima, if only—

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asked, oddly intense.

  Out of nowhere she heard Mukhtar’s last words to her, the night she knew she had to get out fast and never come back. I have to get out of Abbas al-Din. You’re my passage to a new life in Australia. Hate me all you want, I don’t care. I’m still rich enough to give you a wonderful life, and to take care of your family. Latif won’t have you now. Your family has accepted the marriage will happen. You will marry me, Hana!

  She shuddered, wondering if Mukhtar had managed to find a way out of the country without her; if Latif had found another wife—

  ‘Was it so bad?’

  She willed calm, even managed to smile at him. ‘It has wonderful culture, some amazing beauty.’ It certainly wasn’t the fault of the country that one of its sons had run drugs through the family import-export business, and that he was good at covering it up. If she hadn’t caught him making a deal when she’d come to visit Latif—

  ‘How long has it been since you were there?’ she asked, to turn the conversation.

  He looked at her, his eyes like a blank wall she’d run into. ‘You know, don’t you? The world knows what happened.’

  He’d left three years ago, and he’d never returned. He’d checked out of the hospital the day after Fadi’s funeral, long before his graft surgeries were finished. According to news reports, he’d sent a letter asking his younger brother Harun to take his position.

  ‘You must miss home. I know how much I miss Perth.’ Awkward words; she cursed her clumsy mouth. So inadequate for all the pain he’d been through.

  ‘So Australia is home to you?’

  She shrugged at the deft turning of the subject. ‘I grew up there. Perth is beautiful, isolated from the rest of the country. Like Abbas al-Din it has deserts all around, and spectacular beaches. It has similar seasons, too. Hot and hotter.’ She grinned. ‘I think we’re a tad too far west again.’

  He nodded. ‘We had to avoid some bad territory—now,’ he warned her of the Jeep’s movement. She hung onto the loop. When he’d turned the Jeep, he asked, ‘You feel Australian?’

  Slowly, she said, ‘Yes and no. It’s an unusual experience, growing up between two diverse cultures.’

  ‘I didn’t spend much time in the West until I was a man,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘How was it for you?’

  She bit the inside of her lip and thought about it. ‘We spoke Arabic at home, and English everywhere else. We dressed modestly, but in Western clothing,’ she said, feeling awkward. ‘We were brought up to respect our faith and to live in peace with our neighbours, but we were still…different, you know?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I never quite knew who or what I was, but I was happy enough.’ That was why her dad had encouraged her to return to Abbas al-Din, to meet Latif when she finished her nursing degree. Australia had been good to their family socially and financially, but her parents had wanted their children to know their home country and culture, and marry where they’d feel comfortable.

  She’d gone into her engagement with eagerness. Latif was a gentle, kind man in his mid-thirties from a good family, successful and ready to become a husband. He’d listened to her, made her smile, and with Latif she had felt happy. And best of all, when he’d promised to respect her opinions and wishes, she had known she could believe him. She’d liked Latif, very much.

  He didn’t listen to me when I said Mukhtar was lying, she thought sadly, nostalgic for that happy time rather than for Latif himself.

  ‘Do you know where you belong now?’ Alim asked, breaking into her dark reverie.

  ‘Does anyone?’ She sighed and shrugged.

  ‘Sometimes we can’t be where we belong.’

  The curt tone didn’t hide the intensity of suffering beneath. Hana glanced at him, saw his jaw tensed, his eyes focused too hard on the way ahead. ‘You can’t go home until you’ve forgiven yourself for what happened to your brother.’

  He turned to her, and what she saw now took her breath away: turbulent, beautiful male, endless anguish. ‘You can’t go back, and I’m guessing you only let your family down. I took a good, potentially great leader from a nation before his time.’

  ‘And what did you lose?’ she asked, seeing the half-truth inside his words.

  It was the untold halves that left them both here in Africa, half-people suffering inside everything left unsaid.

  He geared down. ‘Now.’

  She held onto the loop again, knowing he wouldn’t say more—unless she pushed him. ‘Abbas al-Din lost a good man, a strong leader—but they survived, they moved on. You lost your brother, and you’ve given up on life.’

  ‘Fadi was more than a good man or strong leader,’ he snarled without warning. ‘He was a father to Harun and me when our parents died, our guide and mentor. He taught me everything, was my dearest friend and closest confidant.’ The next words came out twisted with self-hate, and she ached for him. ‘You have no idea. Fadi’s with me everywhere I go, a permanent reminder that it was my fault he died.’

  And that, she suspected, was the first time he’d said anything so emotio
nal since Fadi’s accident. ‘Alim…’

  ‘Don’t tell me he’d hate to see me like this. I know he’d want me to become the ruler he’d have been.’ He spoke right over her before she could say the words forming on her tongue. ‘But I don’t deserve to take his place—it’d be as if I walked on his grave and took his life from him a second time!’

  ‘I see,’ she said, after a long silence.

  He frowned at her, but said nothing. Perhaps he feared opening a can of worms.

  ‘I think I’d feel exactly the same.’ She pointed ahead. ‘Watch where you’re going.’

  He turned, saw the massive rock looming ahead, and corrected his direction. ‘But?’ he asked, with a grim awareness in his voice. ‘There is a “but” hiding in there somewhere.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Yes, there is a “but”. But—this is about more than your private grief and personal feelings. Abbas al-Din lost a good, strong leader—but it could have a leader who’s learned from his mistakes, and learned compassion from suffering.’

  ‘My brother Harun is all that,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘He did everything right, even married the princess Fadi was contracted to wed the week after the accident happened.’

  Wondering why Fadi had so recklessly risked his life a week before his wedding, she touched his hand, gripping the wheel with whitened knuckles. ‘I can’t blame you for refusing. That was asking too much of you.’

  He lifted a brow. ‘Thanks for the absolution, Sahar Thurayya.’

  The blatantly sarcastic words didn’t hurt her; his grief was as raw as if it had happened yesterday. ‘But—I still haven’t finished my “but”,’ she added, smiling gently, ‘did you ever ask Harun what he wanted, or did you take it for granted he’d do it all and better than you?’

  A long silence followed. ‘What is it you’re not saying?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I understand why you don’t watch news reports of home, but it’s left you with a wrong supposition. Your brother Harun isn’t doing as well as you suppose.’

  At that he put his foot on the brake and ground the Jeep to a halt, leaving the engine running. He turned to her and said in a near-snarl, ‘What’s wrong with my brother?’

  His pain, his guilt was so intense beneath the façade of anger. She blew out air as she tried to think of a gentle way to say it. ‘I’m in contact with a few aid workers from the region. Local gossip has it that Harun is ruling Abbas al-Din well—but the people want you back. And while Harun’s doing his best for the country, and helped put the nation back on its feet after Fadi’s death, he has no personal happiness of his own.’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, his voice dark and grim. ‘Amber’s beautiful, a genuinely nice person, too—and don’t tell me he doesn’t like her. I saw it in his eyes when they met. He was crazy about her.’

  She replied with a reluctant sigh. ‘Perhaps he was—but how did she feel about having to marry the youngest brother within weeks of Fadi’s death? Tradition would have stated that you marry her—isn’t that right?’

  She almost felt the tightness of Alim’s jaw. ‘Yes.’ He didn’t repeat himself. Marrying Amber would have been repulsive to him—as repulsive as marrying Mukhtar was to her, but for different reasons.

  ‘Palace gossip says he and the princess Amber are far from happy. In three years they haven’t been seen smiling at each other in the way of lovers, let alone touching. Her ladies swear Harun doesn’t visit her bedroom at night—’ she lifted a hand as he scowled and opened his mouth ‘—and it’s backed up by facts. In three years she hasn’t fallen pregnant.’ She paused to let him absorb the knowledge of his brother’s marital unhappiness before she went on. ‘If there isn’t an heir soon, you know what will happen next.’

  Chapter Seven

  ALIM stared ahead at the empty-seeming darkness: as filled with pitfalls and boulders as Hana’s conversation. He did indeed know what would come next: the sharks would begin circling, from other princely families in the region to neighbouring countries, to powerful Western corporations and nations with greedy eyes fixed on their oil and gas reserves.

  And he knew everything Hana wasn’t saying. Was Harun drowning beneath the load of responsibility he, Alim, had tossed on him by disappearing? Why wasn’t he happy with the beautiful princess he’d—he’d been forced to wed?

  For the first time Alim realised how selfish he’d been to leave his younger brother alone and grieving. Drowning in his own grief, he’d been blind to Harun’s needs. As Hana had said so eloquently, he’d expected Harun to pick up the pieces of a shattered royal family and a nation on his behalf. He’d known serious, stable Harun would do the right thing, do a better job than he, Alim, ever could—right down to marrying the princess when he couldn’t face it.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said, and couldn’t help the terse anger in his voice. He only hoped she knew it wasn’t directed at her, but a reckless, passionate young man who’d led a charmed life until the fateful day he’d talked Fadi into racing him.

  ‘I hope it helps you make the right decision.’ Hana looked out of the window into the empty night. She was leaving the decision to him.

  They both knew there wasn’t a decision to make. He had to go home, ask Harun what he wanted, to stay on as sheikh or not, to remain married to Amber or not. Maybe if he had a bit of time out, he and Amber could work it out—

  Then he glanced in the rear-vision mirror, and gunned the engine again. ‘And what happens next might come to us, and sooner than we think if we don’t move. I should never have stopped the Jeep.’

  Hana turned her face to the back window, and paled. ‘They’re close.’

  ‘Four kilometres, maybe more,’ he corrected gently, cursing himself for scaring her. ‘The dust looks closer than it is out here, in the darkness.’

  She nodded, and didn’t speak again for long minutes. Then she said in a strained voice, ‘It wasn’t my place to tell you about your brother.’

  ‘Maybe it needed to be said. And maybe I needed to talk about it,’ he replied, surprising himself with the realisation that what he’d said was true. She’d made him want to live again, to stop running, merely by telling him of the suffering his little brother endured on his behalf.

  She was holding onto the broken jacket as if it were her only lifeline. ‘Not to me, Alim. Don’t ask me, don’t confide in me. I can’t even help myself out of my own mess.’

  ‘Maybe you don’t have to, Hana,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe life, fate or God brought us together for a purpose. Maybe we can help each other.’

  ‘What, we met for the express purpose of solving each other’s problems?’ she asked, with the same hard sarcasm he’d unleashed on her only minutes before.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m no prophet.’

  ‘And I’m no wise woman,’ she retorted. ‘I’m just a half-Arabic, half-Australian miner’s daughter who doesn’t even know where she belongs.’

  The self-hate in her voice was like a hand shoved in his face. Don’t go there. But somebody had to open that door and show her the monster in her personal cupboard wasn’t as big or bad as she feared—

  But this wasn’t the time, and he wasn’t the man for the job. He couldn’t even frighten off his own monsters. Why would God send a man who was such an obvious failure at his life to teach Hana how to live hers?

  He said quietly, ‘Science and the Quran teach us that we’re all one family, Hana, from common ancestry. So if you see a division between us, it’s only wealth. The division of high or low birth exists only in your mind.’ To lighten the mood—he could sense her inner struggle to not look back—he added, ‘We all need to eat, drink, sleep and use the bathroom, no matter how much some of us pretend we don’t.’

  ‘I have to believe that after the past few days.’ She grinned at him. ‘My poor energy bars really affect you, don’t they?’

  He mock-frowned at her. ‘My bodily functions are a state secret to be kept between us alone; but once we reach safety,
I swear I’ll never eat another energy bar.’

  Her musical laughter came rippling from her throat, and he ached again: ached to touch her hand, to draw her close, look in her eyes and see the restless need in her again when he finally tasted her lips. When they weren’t talking, the need grew to unbearable proportions.

  Which was why he’d poked his nose into her life, and allowed her to step an inch inside his. It had come to this: anything to stop himself for another minute, another hour, because if he touched her again he’d lose control. He was still in exquisite pain from massaging her; touching her made him want far more than an hour’s release. His fingers on her bare skin, hearing her murmur his name in feminine awakening…He almost groaned aloud thinking about it. How beautiful it was to caress her—it made him feel…whole. As if he’d come home.

  Whatever had happened in Hana’s past, he was the first man to truly arouse her. He couldn’t doubt it after seeing the glimmering dawn of desire in her eyes when he’d cupped her cheek in his palm. Such a simple movement for such an unforgettable reaction. What he wouldn’t give to see her face vivid and alive for him for the rest of his life!

  He’d give anything…anything but his brother’s happiness. He could do nothing, say nothing until he knew the direction of the rest of his life. If he had a life after this.

  ‘Be grateful for my poor energy bars—they saved your life,’ she mock-admonished him, willing to play the game, too, to stay away from his hot buttons.

  ‘As grateful as you were for my muddy water?’ he retorted, mimicking the motions of tossing water out the window, and she laughed again.

  Neither of them looked back, but kept laughing and joking. Neither spoke aloud their belief that they’d be dead in less than an hour.

  ‘We’re not far from the truck, if I followed Abdel’s instructions well enough.’

  She nodded. ‘This is a fairly deserted region, and the scrub is high to the right.’ She pointed to a thick wall of darkness. ‘It’d be easy to hide a truck inside it, so long as you don’t mind the duco being scratched to Billy-o.’